Quotes By Isabel Allende

I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

Today's girls are tomorrow's women - and leaders.

Giving women education, work, the ability to control their own income, inherit and own property, benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper, the village prospers, and eventually so does the whole country.

I've been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently.

I was not supposed to be in any way a liberated person. I was a female born in the '40s in a patriarchal family; I was supposed to marry and make everyone around me happy.

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate.

The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing.

I was a very bad journalist. Awful. I would just invent everything. If I did an interview, I had a preconception of what that person should say and I would put my words in his mouth.

My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses.

I'm interested in people who have to overcome obstacles, people who are not sheltered by the umbrella of the establishment, marginals.

For real change, we need feminine energy in the management of the world. We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men.

I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realized I can't change it and I like it.

I have more freedom when I write fiction, but my memoirs have had a much stronger impact on my readers. Somehow the 'message,' even if I am not even aware that there is one, is conveyed better in this form.

We want a world where life is preserved, and the quality of life is enriched for everybody, not only for the privileged.

I have travelled all over the world and one thing that amazes me is that I can communicate with people. My story may be different but emotionally we are all the same.

In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today.

Women have always been courageous... They are always fearless when protecting their children and in the last century they have been fearless in the fight for their rights.

I don't think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile. I would be trapped in the chores, in the family, in the person that people expected me to be.

I like Hillary Clinton a lot. I know her.

Writing is my job. I don't think of it as art.

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks.

The media could do a much better job, that's for sure, especially the media that targets women... Human rights? They couldn't care less!

What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.

If this world is going to be a better place for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it will be women who make it so.

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.

I write to understand my circumstances, to sort out the confusion of reality, to exorcise my demons. But most of all, I write because I love it!

I try to let go of the intellect and just tell the story. I only read the page I have in front of me on the screen. Then when the whole story is told, I print it, wait a week and read it.

Empowering women means trusting them.

Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed.